In mathematics, once something is defined, that definition holds until someone can prove that something is fundamentally wrong with the assumptions on which the definition is based. (Or until the end of time, which ever is sooner.) For example, a graph has the specific definition of a set of nodes and edges. (Don't remember the exact wording.)
In language, once something is defined, that definition may change based on how people use it. Change takes place very slowly, but it occurs. The only example of this that I can think of at the moment is vagina, which was originally a slang term literally meaning the sheath of a sword -- the proper name for that part was c*nt. Obviously, this has completely changed.
Computer Science falls into a weird place. CS was originally a branch of mathematics (the study of algorithms) -- remember that it existed before computing machines. The programming part came later. Now it's possible to "do computers" without doing math. There's still a historical relationship to math, but most modern computing is less about math and more about business.
So the question here is whether we're looking for a mathematical definition of an OS, or a linguistic (contextual) definition of an OS. Mathematically, Unix is an OS -- it's a layer of abstraction between the base hardware and the applications that run on the hardware. (There's probably more to the definition than that.) Linguistically, I would argue that most people expect an OS to be more than that. You sit someone down in front of a Unix console, they'll look for icons.
Perhaps the mathematical level of abstraction has be become too much of an integral part of computing. As far as most people are concerned, the OS *is* the computer -- hardware doesn't mean as much any more.
If you dreamed about your girlfriend as much as you dreamed about work, she wouldn't think you were on crack.
Then again, if you spent enough time with your girlfriend such that you started dreaming about her instead of work, you'd probably be fired and subsequently dumped for being an unemployed bum.
Then you'd have no girlfriend and no job, but your dreams would be WAY more fun.
Second: I'll buy one when it's capable of being a guard dog, a la Snow Crash. I'd love to see the neighbors get mangled by my nuclear attack dog!
Well, if you look here, you'll see that "AIBO learns from your praise or scolding. Praise it for playing with its ball, and it will enjoy playing with the ball more than ever. But if you scold AIBO when it is only looking at the ball, it
will soon ignore the ball altogether."
So I suppose if you scold it when it's around you, it will ignore you, but if you praise it when it's around the neighbours, it will go after the neighbours.
Some computerized weaponry and a little bit of hacking later, you have a psychologically-warped little robot dog that's armed to the teeth.
...please feel free to email me, and I will send you some information on my company. We're hiring, and while this place is by no means perfect, it's a small-to-medium sized company, quite successful and not very Dilbert-like.
We make software development tools, and by an odd coincidence, many people on the marketing side are former coders. The company was started by 1 geek, and 1 geek-gone-business-side. We're looking for mostly Java, some C++, some mobility, etc. The company is in Toronto, Canada.
If you had a choice between an all-you-can-eat buffet, and an a la carte restaurant, both of which served the exact same food, and had the exact same level of service, what would you choose?
Sure, some people would say that they the buffet isn't worth it because they don't eat very much, but 90% of everyone I know would hit the buffet. And even light eaters binge sometimes, or go for the buffet because they don't know how much they're going to eat.
So the buffet restaurant makes major profits and the a la carte restaurant goes out of business (or starts offering a buffet, to stay competitive), which forces everyone to go to the buffet if they want to eat.
And then the light eaters of world whine about how buffets just aren't worth it for them, and want a la carte restaurants. But the restaurant owners already know that a la carte just isn't profitable enough, so they continue to stick to the buffet.
Who has the.sig "kids love the rich taste of content?" (or something like that) It's so appropriate here.
Re:The RIAA's problem began 15 years ago...
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When they totally did NOTHING to stop people from copying their tapes. Large scale piracy, yes, but individuals copying tapes for their buddies were never addressed.
Actually, when you purchase a blank audio tape, a portion of that goes to the recording industry -- I believe it's to the RIAA, but I don't exactly recall. So in a sense, you pre-pay to prevent true piracy. (I'm currently taking an IT Law course, and we talked about this in the context of Napster. On the other hand, maybe this only happens here in Canada.)
Where I live, there's been talk of doing the same thing with blank CDs, though I don't think anything has officially come out of it.
This, however, is not the case with video cassettes and the movie industry. If you buy a blank video cassette, the movie industry gets nothing. Which may be part of the reason why the movie industry got into video rentals, (after losing the Sony case, they had to make money off cassettes somehow) but the recording industry never got into music rentals.
Everyone says the same thing...
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What is wrong is profiting from others' hard work.
What is patently obvious from both the original letter, and the follow-up letter to brassknuckles is that they never even looked at the site before they threatened to sue!
So what is this? Is there some kind of a software out there that checks trademarked names against the whois database, and then GENERATES threatening letters?
Beyond utter stupidity, tt's the only explanation I can think of.
I've been doing a lot of research in J2EE adoption at work. My colleagues and I have spoken to dozens of people, and what we've found is this:
Many large companies started getting into server-side Java about a year and half ago, primarily using servlets and helper classes. At the time, the app servers weren't very mature so most companies wrote their own app servers (or hired consultants to do so). Now that app servers have matured, they're currently re-writing the existing systems to work with a commercial app server so that they need only worry about the business logic, and that they can take advantage of the J2EE spec.
Very few companies are using EJBs yet -- the level of J2EE adoption seems to stop at servlets. That's partly because of using homegrown servers, and partly because many companies are waiting for app server EJB-support to fully mature. Most are looking to migrate into EJBs within a year.
Finally, the majority of companies seem to be in the development/test stage for their server-side Java apps. They aren't looking to deploy for another month or two, and they may not be in full scale production for 6 months.
So basically, while many have bought into the J2EE hype already, very few are really using the full spec, although they plan to get into that in about a year. At that point, you'll probably start hearing a lot more about how well (or how poorly) J2EE has lived up to its hype.
Other people here have already discussed how you shouldn't need to worry about catching up with technology. Essentially, if you're getting a strong background in tech at school, it should not be too hard to find out how the new trends fit with what you already know. Talk to some of your classmates when you get back, and then get some books, and then write small apps on your own to test what you've learned.
As for getting a job afterwards, your main problem there would be whether or not a machine is scanning your resume. If so, the machine is likely to look for recent buzzwords that you won't have, and you'll get dismissed very quickly.
If you get a human to look at your resume, you may be lucky in that that person could be very intrigued by your experiences in the Peace Corps. Since most companies prefer to hire referrals rather than outsiders, this is the best approach in any case. Read Ask the Headhunter for very different, very gutsy, and (IMO) very sensible approach to doing this. The author (a headhunter) tends to overstate his point a little, but it's still very useful.
If you stick to a more traditional job-seeking approach, try larger companies that are not strictly tech-focused. (e.g., banks, and not software companies.) Companies like these typically are more willing to spend money on training, so you can get some work experience and some on the job training, and then you're in a better position to move on.
After you've spent two years in the Peace Corps, I wonder if you'll even want to go into the IT field. You're embarking on a very big, and possibly life-altering experience, so keep in mind that who you are now, and what you want to do with your life now, may be very different from who will be then. This is neither a good thing nor a bad thing, but I'd advise you to simply keep that possibility in mind.
The internet has been commonly available for about 5 years. That's not enough time to judge its impact. Could any predict life AFTER the industrial revolution, DURING the industrial revolution. Heck no. Half the people were busy expounding on the wonders of the modern age, and the other half were busy expounding on the horrors of the modern age.
No such thing as a virtual community, outside of those driven by marketing? What then, pray tell, is slashdot? What are news groups? Already, people are getting sick of marketing-driven sites -- what will happen 20 years from now.
Technology will never trickle down to the poor? More people use computers now then ever before. In Canada, the average phone:persone ratio is 1:1 -- it took 100 years, but it happened.
Virtual communities will never replace real contact with people? Of course it won't. Why would anyone want it too? How else would people have relationships or procreate (or recreate)? The virtual community allows you to extend your relationships beyond geographical boundries. It's a world where you nobody knows you unless you want to them too -- so you cannot be judged by race, or gender, or religion unless you choose to be.
Here, you are only judged by the intelligence of your posts.
Second, YRO is sort of odd category when you're not American, since a lot of the info doesn't really apply to me. I can comment and pat myself on the back for not moving there, but that's about it.
I realize that more readers here are probably from the US, but a little attention for the non-Yanks would be cool.
Actually, the one article I really love to see is one that compares all the internet-related/free speech laws in as many countries as realistically possible.
I know, this is a controversial opinion, but Java's made a mark on the industry, and its entire span of influence has been within this decade, so perhaps its creator should be on this list.
At any rate, I see more of a reason for Gosling to be in the top 10 this decade, than Jobs or Gates, whose major influences were in the last decade.
But yes, lists like this are stupid.
So if you don't live in the States, you can...?
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... do nothing but wait until Napster and MP3.com move to Canada?
... send emails from US-based ISPs?
... create hundreds of snail mail letters, smuggle them into the States, and mail them?
... pat myself on the back for not being American?
... whine about being forced to depend on US laws for many of my internet needs?
... make my own non-US MP3-sharing site and hope I don't get extradited?
Someone tell me what I can do. Depending on my politicians is bad enough -- and now I need to depend on politicians that I didn't elect and of whom I can't expect anything.
I totally agree. Especially when it comes to stock options. IMO, options are the easiest way to convince someone to stay somewhere longer. People start saying to themselves "Even though I hate this place, my options vest in only another year, so maybe I should stick it out, get rich, and then I can retire."
So they burn out waiting for their options to vest. Which is silly, because options are money that they don't have.
The sad part is that it's typically people in marketing who help define company strategy, and are therefore in a better position to determine where the stock will be. (Not that they always know, but they have the most access to the information.) Techies get so hyper-focused on getting the product to ship that they barely get the opportunity to see the larger picture.
...and went into product management, so I could manage instead be managed.
When you get right down to it, the first 80% of coding (which takes 20% of the time) is fun, since that's where the design decisions and experimentation goes on. The last 20% (80% of the total time) sucks, because it's churning out the boring bits of the code, or driving yourself nuts debugging.
Unfortunately, 80% of your career goes into doing 20%-work. By the time you get to the fun stuff, you're cynical and sick of it.
Not to mention that many of the people who love coding so much that they stick with it that long have no management skills, but are expected to start managing because they're senior people. The last company I was at lost the best coder I've ever met for this reason -- they tried to get him to manage people, when all he wanted to do was code.
The hierarchies that work in other industries don't work as well for software. Every industry has a grunt labour component, but in IT, it seems that you're more likely to get out of grunt labour by switching companies or fields than by working your way up.
Thanks for the info about Canadian server jurisdiction. I was not aware of that.
By the way, I wouldn't say that Canada has no laws about this stuff. Canada has very strong hate speech laws, and doesn't protect freedom of speech the way the US does.
What I meant about no laws was that Canada (to my knowledge) has no laws specific to internet content. Essentially, if it's illegal in print it's also illegal on the internet, but there are no laws like COPA, DMCA (also not specific to the net), those stupid things about methamphetimines, etc.
And Canada's hate speech laws (to my understanding) are defined that you cannot make hate speech that will incite people to hate-motivated crimes. Obviously, the difference between the two is a fine line. Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees freedom of speech, but it also states that all freedoms have limits, which encapsulates the concept of my freedom to express anger stops when my fist hits your nose.
Pardon my rhapsodizing, but the more I learn about the laws passed in the US, the more I love my country.
If you're not moderating (i.e., everyone who submits gets their submission posted) then you can take the slashdot approach and declare that only you take no responsibility for posts.
If you are moderating, then the responsibility falls on you to determine what can, and cannot go on the site. In that case, I'd invest in an IT lawyer to write an AUP and a disclaimer absolving you of responsibility if someone does something stupid. (i.e., you are not responsible if someone post confidential information and did not tell you that it was confidential.
Just in case though, if I were you, I'd move your servers to Canada, where there are far fewer (if any) internet-content laws.
It may require more work, but two modes (i.e., flash/non-flash, text-only/graphical) may just be the easiest way to go -- so long as the content is identical in both modes. I imagine a site with fewer toys is easier to make accessible.
The added bonus is that you can also support non-standard browsers, low broadband, people who don't want to download and install plugins, etc.
Personally, I'd dump the showy stuff, but then again, I don't do this as a business.
Incidentally, does anyone know of anything you can use to check how accessable your site is?
BTW: What does it take for me to move north of the border? It seems to be an increasingly appealing proposition these last few years.
So glad you asked that, friend. I would start off by looking at the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website, which you can find here. If you're a highly skilled geek, I don't anticipate too many difficulties -- but then again, I was born here, so how would I know?
The UN rated Canada the number 1 place in the world to live for several years in a row; nevertheless, if you get serious about moving up here, be prepared for higher taxes, an increasingly crappy exchange rate, lower pay, and having to wait for all the cool new toys to be released in Canada.
Of course, in exchange, you get stronger beer and health care.
Polarizations and Generalizations
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High-tech workers don't really seem to mind; they aren't interested in lifetime employment, but creative working environments and good pay.
I've met very few people, tech or non-tech, who weren't interested in a creative working environment and high pay.
That suggests the boundaries between the tech and non-tech work forces are becoming more distinct, even as the former grows increasingly influential.
I'm very confused. If tech is influencing non-tech, then how can they be increasingly distinct?
Has concept of what employment means changed? Yes. Did the tech community influence this change? Yes. Does this mean that that society is polarized on technological lines? Not really. I see it as (in this case, anyway) techs are on the first wave of changes, which then filter through into a more mainstream approach.
I mean, even non-technical people are changing jobs frequently, working on a contract basis, etc. Like my father-in-law. He worked as a comptroller for the same company for years. The company went under, and now he's a contractor for payroll, taxes, etc.
We're in the middle of changes right now. I don't think it's fair to make sweeping statements about how things have polarized until things settle down.
"Did Einstein patent 'The Theory of Relativity', or 'Special Relativity'"
Umm, Einstein didn't patent The Theory of Relativity because pure IDEAS ARE NOT PATENTABLE.
The implementation of an idea IS patentable.
So you can't patent the Theory of Reletivity, but you could patent a time machine based on it. (or something.)
When it comes to software, the line between the implementation and the idea is very fuzzy. I can't help you more than that.
My second instinct is to wonder if this isn't the whole point. Would Dickens have happened without the press? It was only a new form of distribution, but how much did knowing how it would be distributed affect the author? Did the fact that his work was published as serials change his approach?
First off, Dickens knew he was writing serials. Many Victorian authors were published this way. Sometimes the book preceded the serialization, but (to the best of my knowledge) many novels were subsequently created from serials. Moreover, Victorian readers primarily read novels in serial form.
You do, however, raise an interesting point about the effect of distribution on the writing. If you look at novels that were written serially, chapters in the novel tend to corespond to one serial issue. Thus, a single chapter in a serial novel tends to be a complete sub-story, which makes the novel into a series of substories. (As cheesy as it sounds, Anne of Green Gables is a really obvious example of this.)
Novels that aren't written serially tend to have greater complexity in their plot. (Though clearly this is not always the case.) You can jump around in the plot, because the reader isn't waiting a week to see what happens next.
The big question then, is how frequently would the next segment be published? (Note that there still remains a physical speed to writing.) If it were published daily, then would plot complexity change? If it were weekly, would we be back to a more linear structure?
Moreover, many modern novels are not written sequentially. Or if they are, they go through frequent revision. Look at the Lord of the Rings. The first and last novels (The Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King) flow smoothly. Tolkein wrote these all at once. The second novel (The Two Towers) is a lot choppier, but sections of that were written as serialized letters to his son. Moreover, after he reached the end of the book, his ideas had changed, and so he actually went backwards through the entire book revising the plot so that it fit better. (Example: Sam Gamgee mentions Rose Cotton several times while he and Frodo are in Mordor, but there's no mention of her at all in the first book.)
An epic novel like this would be very difficult to write serially -- there are too many interconnections. And if it had been written on the web, Tolkein may have been too overwhelmed with people pointing out inconsistancies or fussing with smaller details to complete the novel; as it stood, the book took years to write. The internet does not allow for that kind of time.
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In mathematics, once something is defined, that definition holds until someone can prove that something is fundamentally wrong with the assumptions on which the definition is based. (Or until the end of time, which ever is sooner.) For example, a graph has the specific definition of a set of nodes and edges. (Don't remember the exact wording.)
In language, once something is defined, that definition may change based on how people use it. Change takes place very slowly, but it occurs. The only example of this that I can think of at the moment is vagina, which was originally a slang term literally meaning the sheath of a sword -- the proper name for that part was c*nt. Obviously, this has completely changed.
Computer Science falls into a weird place. CS was originally a branch of mathematics (the study of algorithms) -- remember that it existed before computing machines. The programming part came later. Now it's possible to "do computers" without doing math. There's still a historical relationship to math, but most modern computing is less about math and more about business.
So the question here is whether we're looking for a mathematical definition of an OS, or a linguistic (contextual) definition of an OS. Mathematically, Unix is an OS -- it's a layer of abstraction between the base hardware and the applications that run on the hardware. (There's probably more to the definition than that.) Linguistically, I would argue that most people expect an OS to be more than that. You sit someone down in front of a Unix console, they'll look for icons.
Perhaps the mathematical level of abstraction has be become too much of an integral part of computing. As far as most people are concerned, the OS *is* the computer -- hardware doesn't mean as much any more.
If you dreamed about your girlfriend as much as you dreamed about work, she wouldn't think you were on crack.
Then again, if you spent enough time with your girlfriend such that you started dreaming about her instead of work, you'd probably be fired and subsequently dumped for being an unemployed bum.
Then you'd have no girlfriend and no job, but your dreams would be WAY more fun.
Second: I'll buy one when it's capable of being a guard dog, a la Snow Crash. I'd love to see the neighbors get mangled by my nuclear attack dog!
Well, if you look here, you'll see that "AIBO learns from your praise or scolding. Praise it for playing with its ball, and it will enjoy playing with the ball more than ever. But if you scold AIBO when it is only looking at the ball, it will soon ignore the ball altogether."
So I suppose if you scold it when it's around you, it will ignore you, but if you praise it when it's around the neighbours, it will go after the neighbours.
Some computerized weaponry and a little bit of hacking later, you have a psychologically-warped little robot dog that's armed to the teeth.
...please feel free to email me, and I will send you some information on my company. We're hiring, and while this place is by no means perfect, it's a small-to-medium sized company, quite successful and not very Dilbert-like.
We make software development tools, and by an odd coincidence, many people on the marketing side are former coders. The company was started by 1 geek, and 1 geek-gone-business-side. We're looking for mostly Java, some C++, some mobility, etc. The company is in Toronto, Canada.
If you had a choice between an all-you-can-eat buffet, and an a la carte restaurant, both of which served the exact same food, and had the exact same level of service, what would you choose?
Sure, some people would say that they the buffet isn't worth it because they don't eat very much, but 90% of everyone I know would hit the buffet. And even light eaters binge sometimes, or go for the buffet because they don't know how much they're going to eat.
So the buffet restaurant makes major profits and the a la carte restaurant goes out of business (or starts offering a buffet, to stay competitive), which forces everyone to go to the buffet if they want to eat.
And then the light eaters of world whine about how buffets just aren't worth it for them, and want a la carte restaurants. But the restaurant owners already know that a la carte just isn't profitable enough, so they continue to stick to the buffet.
Who has the .sig "kids love the rich taste of content?" (or something like that) It's so appropriate here.
When they totally did NOTHING to stop people from copying their tapes. Large scale piracy, yes, but individuals copying tapes for their buddies were never addressed.
Actually, when you purchase a blank audio tape, a portion of that goes to the recording industry -- I believe it's to the RIAA, but I don't exactly recall. So in a sense, you pre-pay to prevent true piracy. (I'm currently taking an IT Law course, and we talked about this in the context of Napster. On the other hand, maybe this only happens here in Canada.)
Where I live, there's been talk of doing the same thing with blank CDs, though I don't think anything has officially come out of it.
This, however, is not the case with video cassettes and the movie industry. If you buy a blank video cassette, the movie industry gets nothing. Which may be part of the reason why the movie industry got into video rentals, (after losing the Sony case, they had to make money off cassettes somehow) but the recording industry never got into music rentals.
What is wrong is profiting from others' hard work.
Courtney Love said the exact same thing -- about the recourd companies.
What makes you think you have to look beyond utter stupidity for the answer? I think utter stupidity is a perfectly good asnwer.
I was having a short-term case of faith in human intelligence.
Thank you. I'm cured, and feel much better now.
What is patently obvious from both the original letter, and the follow-up letter to brassknuckles is that they never even looked at the site before they threatened to sue!
So what is this? Is there some kind of a software out there that checks trademarked names against the whois database, and then GENERATES threatening letters?
Beyond utter stupidity, tt's the only explanation I can think of.
I've been doing a lot of research in J2EE adoption at work. My colleagues and I have spoken to dozens of people, and what we've found is this:
Many large companies started getting into server-side Java about a year and half ago, primarily using servlets and helper classes. At the time, the app servers weren't very mature so most companies wrote their own app servers (or hired consultants to do so). Now that app servers have matured, they're currently re-writing the existing systems to work with a commercial app server so that they need only worry about the business logic, and that they can take advantage of the J2EE spec.
Very few companies are using EJBs yet -- the level of J2EE adoption seems to stop at servlets. That's partly because of using homegrown servers, and partly because many companies are waiting for app server EJB-support to fully mature. Most are looking to migrate into EJBs within a year.
Finally, the majority of companies seem to be in the development/test stage for their server-side Java apps. They aren't looking to deploy for another month or two, and they may not be in full scale production for 6 months.
So basically, while many have bought into the J2EE hype already, very few are really using the full spec, although they plan to get into that in about a year. At that point, you'll probably start hearing a lot more about how well (or how poorly) J2EE has lived up to its hype.
Other people here have already discussed how you shouldn't need to worry about catching up with technology. Essentially, if you're getting a strong background in tech at school, it should not be too hard to find out how the new trends fit with what you already know. Talk to some of your classmates when you get back, and then get some books, and then write small apps on your own to test what you've learned.
As for getting a job afterwards, your main problem there would be whether or not a machine is scanning your resume. If so, the machine is likely to look for recent buzzwords that you won't have, and you'll get dismissed very quickly.
If you get a human to look at your resume, you may be lucky in that that person could be very intrigued by your experiences in the Peace Corps. Since most companies prefer to hire referrals rather than outsiders, this is the best approach in any case. Read Ask the Headhunter for very different, very gutsy, and (IMO) very sensible approach to doing this. The author (a headhunter) tends to overstate his point a little, but it's still very useful.
If you stick to a more traditional job-seeking approach, try larger companies that are not strictly tech-focused. (e.g., banks, and not software companies.) Companies like these typically are more willing to spend money on training, so you can get some work experience and some on the job training, and then you're in a better position to move on.
After you've spent two years in the Peace Corps, I wonder if you'll even want to go into the IT field. You're embarking on a very big, and possibly life-altering experience, so keep in mind that who you are now, and what you want to do with your life now, may be very different from who will be then. This is neither a good thing nor a bad thing, but I'd advise you to simply keep that possibility in mind.
The internet has been commonly available for about 5 years. That's not enough time to judge its impact. Could any predict life AFTER the industrial revolution, DURING the industrial revolution. Heck no. Half the people were busy expounding on the wonders of the modern age, and the other half were busy expounding on the horrors of the modern age.
No such thing as a virtual community, outside of those driven by marketing? What then, pray tell, is slashdot? What are news groups? Already, people are getting sick of marketing-driven sites -- what will happen 20 years from now.
Technology will never trickle down to the poor? More people use computers now then ever before. In Canada, the average phone:persone ratio is 1:1 -- it took 100 years, but it happened.
Virtual communities will never replace real contact with people? Of course it won't. Why would anyone want it too? How else would people have relationships or procreate (or recreate)? The virtual community allows you to extend your relationships beyond geographical boundries. It's a world where you nobody knows you unless you want to them too -- so you cannot be judged by race, or gender, or religion unless you choose to be.
Here, you are only judged by the intelligence of your posts.
First off, Welcome.
Second, YRO is sort of odd category when you're not American, since a lot of the info doesn't really apply to me. I can comment and pat myself on the back for not moving there, but that's about it.
I realize that more readers here are probably from the US, but a little attention for the non-Yanks would be cool.
Actually, the one article I really love to see is one that compares all the internet-related/free speech laws in as many countries as realistically possible.
I know, this is a controversial opinion, but Java's made a mark on the industry, and its entire span of influence has been within this decade, so perhaps its creator should be on this list.
At any rate, I see more of a reason for Gosling to be in the top 10 this decade, than Jobs or Gates, whose major influences were in the last decade.
But yes, lists like this are stupid.
... do nothing but wait until Napster and MP3.com move to Canada?
... send emails from US-based ISPs?
... create hundreds of snail mail letters, smuggle them into the States, and mail them?
... pat myself on the back for not being American?
... whine about being forced to depend on US laws for many of my internet needs?
... make my own non-US MP3-sharing site and hope I don't get extradited?
Someone tell me what I can do. Depending on my politicians is bad enough -- and now I need to depend on politicians that I didn't elect and of whom I can't expect anything.
I totally agree. Especially when it comes to stock options. IMO, options are the easiest way to convince someone to stay somewhere longer. People start saying to themselves "Even though I hate this place, my options vest in only another year, so maybe I should stick it out, get rich, and then I can retire."
So they burn out waiting for their options to vest. Which is silly, because options are money that they don't have.
The sad part is that it's typically people in marketing who help define company strategy, and are therefore in a better position to determine where the stock will be. (Not that they always know, but they have the most access to the information.) Techies get so hyper-focused on getting the product to ship that they barely get the opportunity to see the larger picture.
...and went into product management, so I could manage instead be managed.
When you get right down to it, the first 80% of coding (which takes 20% of the time) is fun, since that's where the design decisions and experimentation goes on. The last 20% (80% of the total time) sucks, because it's churning out the boring bits of the code, or driving yourself nuts debugging.
Unfortunately, 80% of your career goes into doing 20%-work. By the time you get to the fun stuff, you're cynical and sick of it.
Not to mention that many of the people who love coding so much that they stick with it that long have no management skills, but are expected to start managing because they're senior people. The last company I was at lost the best coder I've ever met for this reason -- they tried to get him to manage people, when all he wanted to do was code.
The hierarchies that work in other industries don't work as well for software. Every industry has a grunt labour component, but in IT, it seems that you're more likely to get out of grunt labour by switching companies or fields than by working your way up.
Thanks for the info about Canadian server jurisdiction. I was not aware of that.
By the way, I wouldn't say that Canada has no laws about this stuff. Canada has very strong hate speech laws, and doesn't protect freedom of speech the way the US does.
What I meant about no laws was that Canada (to my knowledge) has no laws specific to internet content. Essentially, if it's illegal in print it's also illegal on the internet, but there are no laws like COPA, DMCA (also not specific to the net), those stupid things about methamphetimines, etc.
And Canada's hate speech laws (to my understanding) are defined that you cannot make hate speech that will incite people to hate-motivated crimes. Obviously, the difference between the two is a fine line. Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees freedom of speech, but it also states that all freedoms have limits, which encapsulates the concept of my freedom to express anger stops when my fist hits your nose.
Pardon my rhapsodizing, but the more I learn about the laws passed in the US, the more I love my country.
If you're not moderating (i.e., everyone who submits gets their submission posted) then you can take the slashdot approach and declare that only you take no responsibility for posts.
If you are moderating, then the responsibility falls on you to determine what can, and cannot go on the site. In that case, I'd invest in an IT lawyer to write an AUP and a disclaimer absolving you of responsibility if someone does something stupid. (i.e., you are not responsible if someone post confidential information and did not tell you that it was confidential.
Just in case though, if I were you, I'd move your servers to Canada, where there are far fewer (if any) internet-content laws.
It may require more work, but two modes (i.e., flash/non-flash, text-only/graphical) may just be the easiest way to go -- so long as the content is identical in both modes. I imagine a site with fewer toys is easier to make accessible.
The added bonus is that you can also support non-standard browsers, low broadband, people who don't want to download and install plugins, etc.
Personally, I'd dump the showy stuff, but then again, I don't do this as a business.
Incidentally, does anyone know of anything you can use to check how accessable your site is?
BTW: What does it take for me to move north of the border? It seems to be an increasingly appealing proposition these last few years.
So glad you asked that, friend. I would start off by looking at the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website, which you can find here. If you're a highly skilled geek, I don't anticipate too many difficulties -- but then again, I was born here, so how would I know?
The UN rated Canada the number 1 place in the world to live for several years in a row; nevertheless, if you get serious about moving up here, be prepared for higher taxes, an increasingly crappy exchange rate, lower pay, and having to wait for all the cool new toys to be released in Canada.
Of course, in exchange, you get stronger beer and health care.
High-tech workers don't really seem to mind; they aren't interested in lifetime employment, but creative working environments and good pay.
I've met very few people, tech or non-tech, who weren't interested in a creative working environment and high pay.
That suggests the boundaries between the tech and non-tech work forces are becoming more distinct, even as the former grows increasingly influential.
I'm very confused. If tech is influencing non-tech, then how can they be increasingly distinct?
Has concept of what employment means changed? Yes. Did the tech community influence this change? Yes. Does this mean that that society is polarized on technological lines? Not really. I see it as (in this case, anyway) techs are on the first wave of changes, which then filter through into a more mainstream approach.
I mean, even non-technical people are changing jobs frequently, working on a contract basis, etc. Like my father-in-law. He worked as a comptroller for the same company for years. The company went under, and now he's a contractor for payroll, taxes, etc.
We're in the middle of changes right now. I don't think it's fair to make sweeping statements about how things have polarized until things settle down.
"Did Einstein patent 'The Theory of Relativity', or 'Special Relativity'"
Umm, Einstein didn't patent The Theory of Relativity because pure IDEAS ARE NOT PATENTABLE.
The implementation of an idea IS patentable. So you can't patent the Theory of Reletivity, but you could patent a time machine based on it. (or something.)
When it comes to software, the line between the implementation and the idea is very fuzzy. I can't help you more than that.
My second instinct is to wonder if this isn't the whole point. Would Dickens have happened without the press? It was only a new form of distribution, but how much did knowing how it would be distributed affect the author? Did the fact that his work was published as serials change his approach?
First off, Dickens knew he was writing serials. Many Victorian authors were published this way. Sometimes the book preceded the serialization, but (to the best of my knowledge) many novels were subsequently created from serials. Moreover, Victorian readers primarily read novels in serial form.
You do, however, raise an interesting point about the effect of distribution on the writing. If you look at novels that were written serially, chapters in the novel tend to corespond to one serial issue. Thus, a single chapter in a serial novel tends to be a complete sub-story, which makes the novel into a series of substories. (As cheesy as it sounds, Anne of Green Gables is a really obvious example of this.)
Novels that aren't written serially tend to have greater complexity in their plot. (Though clearly this is not always the case.) You can jump around in the plot, because the reader isn't waiting a week to see what happens next.
The big question then, is how frequently would the next segment be published? (Note that there still remains a physical speed to writing.) If it were published daily, then would plot complexity change? If it were weekly, would we be back to a more linear structure?
Moreover, many modern novels are not written sequentially. Or if they are, they go through frequent revision. Look at the Lord of the Rings. The first and last novels (The Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King) flow smoothly. Tolkein wrote these all at once. The second novel (The Two Towers) is a lot choppier, but sections of that were written as serialized letters to his son. Moreover, after he reached the end of the book, his ideas had changed, and so he actually went backwards through the entire book revising the plot so that it fit better. (Example: Sam Gamgee mentions Rose Cotton several times while he and Frodo are in Mordor, but there's no mention of her at all in the first book.)
An epic novel like this would be very difficult to write serially -- there are too many interconnections. And if it had been written on the web, Tolkein may have been too overwhelmed with people pointing out inconsistancies or fussing with smaller details to complete the novel; as it stood, the book took years to write. The internet does not allow for that kind of time.